STEVE Mascord is a renowned rugby league journalist who may be the game’s greatest fanatic … and he can’t really cop State of Origin, calling it “an unedifying, crass sell-out”.

CANTERBURY chief executive Raelene Castle has blasted the 11th hour call-up of Josh Morris as “not very reasonable” and suggested split rounds now operate as a de facto salary cap.

Nineteen-year-old Reimis Smith – with an entire match the day before under his belt – had to drive to Canberra to make his debut on Sunday when Blues centre Josh Dugan pulled himself out of last night’s opening interstate match due to an elbow complaint.

“The etiquette in place at the moment is we just have to release our players for Kangaroos and Origin,” Castle tells League Week.

“But in reality, when you’re running a professional competition, to expect us to do that on the morning of a game when we’re 300 km away and our NSW Cup team has played yesterday is not very reasonable.

“If we played (Saturday), they would still have called J Moz up (Sunday).

“The rules need to be documented, they need to be looked at and thought about … the impacts for all parts of the competition, not just Origin.”

Smith may now go doing in league history as the man who ended an era when the game punished clubs in order to keep Origin in a commercial advantageous television time slot.

“The three teams who have lost the most players all lost this weekend,” Castle said.

“The Broncos, the Cowboys and the Bulldogs – five, five and three (players), four for us on the morning, have all lost.

“So you’ve got to question: is this another form of salary capping? The teams that don’t have many players involved in Origin end up with points they may not have otherwise got.

“You’ve got to question the impact for the credibility of the NRL.

“Origin’s amazing. Everyone knows that. Commercially it’s really beneficial. We all know that. But when you look at the actually integrity and credibility of the NRL competition over 26 weeks, you have to question whether this is the right outcome.”

Interstate football was put in midweek some 45 years ago to minimise impact on clubs. With the advent of Origin, it was discovered to be a ratings bonanza.

By the late eighties, players were being stood down from the previous weekend’s club round – defeating the entire purpose of the games being played on Wednesdays in the first place.

“Maybe we have (re-examined it) but not enough,” said Castle. “The fact is we’ve tried to under the new TV deal in 2018.

JAMES Maloney says the endorsement of Brad Fittler as NSW Origin I five-eighth is no consolation for Country’s poor showing in what will probably be the second-last match ever against City.

Fittler, who represented the Blues 31 times, reckons Cronulla’s Maloney is the stand-out candidate to wear the six jersey on June 1 at ANZ Stadium.

But Maloney, 29, tells RLW: “I supposed it’s a nice endorsement to have but I said it leading into this game: my whole focus was to get a win.

“And I’m pretty down at the moment because it wasn’t the case. That’s what this week was all about.

“It was getting a win for Country and we didn’t do it.”

Speaking on radio Triple M at fulltime, Fittler – coach of victors City – said: “Right now at the present time, we’d have to say James Maloney at five-eighth.

“Early on, he had us in all sorts.

“The game got away and he most probably … I’m not sure how urgent he got personally but … the game got away and that wasn’t due to his fault.

“He’s most probably in the best form out of all of them.”

Fittler said halfback was a more vexed position because of the lack of in-form candidates. “I think Adam Reynolds is a fantastic player but the last couple of games, the kicking game, the backbone of his game, has been a bit down,” he said.

Because of a change in the NRL TV deal in 2018, City-Country has only one game to go for the foreseeable future and Country needed to win both remaining matches to draw level on the all-time ledger since the concept went Origin.

Maloney said: “We couldn’t shut down that free-flowing, off-loading style of football they played.

“I would have loved the (City-Country) game to stay. Hopefully there’s still room for it on some form.

“It means a lot to the country. I think the turnout here showed that and a lot of the boys enjoyed playing in the week. I know our boys had a ball this week.

“They had a lot of pride in the jumper and that’s why we’re all hurting now because we couldn’t get the result.”

SO the guys from the Full 80 Podcast are calling it a day. “Do you think some of the passion has gone out of the game?” one of them asked me on their last episode.

“Like, we still follow our teams, but……”

You’ll hear plenty of people say the game is going soft, that it’s being run by suits, that it just doesn’t feel the same.

The Full 80 fellas, well they’re doing what everyone else is threatening to … packing up, going home. They probably have other reasons, too – but are they right? Has the game lost something?

About this time last year, RLW asked me to write about my personal highlights of the season. It’s an indulgence, I guess, but one which I hope you find bearable.

When I go back through 2015, I find plenty of experiences that were truly visceral, not anodyne or sterile.

Rugby league lost fans during the Super League War and it will lose some during what I term a peaceful coup. It is being cleaned up, repackaged for a wider market, made safer for t new world. It will lose more.

But many of those of us who love the game believe it is more than punching and shoulder charging. We have always believed it deserved a wider appeal and we are excited to think it might finally happen. If all you ever liked about the game was the grubby stuff, you didn’t really like the game at all.

So here they are: a few highlights of 2015 that prove rugby league still got passion.

February 22: SOUTH SYDNEY 39 ST HELENS 0 at Langtree Park

“RUSSEL Crowe Snubs Oscars For St Helens” read the incredulous UK national newspaper headlines as the South Sydney owner sprinkled some stardust on the old Merseyside glass-making town. It was the culmination of a three day World Club Series, with Warrington taking on St George Illawarra and Brisbane meeting Wigan in the first expanded such competition in 18-years. This was the only lopsided game. Crowe being interviewed by Brian Carney and leading over the fence of the corporate box to sign as many autographs as possible? Priceless.

May 3: NEW ZEALAND 26 AUSTRALIA 12 at Suncorp Stadium

A BIT of financial belt-tightening by yours truly meant I had written off attending this, as much as it would hurt to miss any international. But then the rain came. The Anzac Test supposed to be played on Friday night but the players were told to go back to their hotel when Suncorp became a rice paddy. So I took it as a sign and hopped on a plane. And what an old-school day Sunday was – sunny, Sunday afternoon Test football and the Kiwis underscoring their recent dominance with a convincing win. Thankyou, mother nature.

June 6: CANTERBURY 20 MELBOURNE 4 at Belmore Sports Ground

BACK in the day, Canterbury were such a welcoming club to young reporters. Barry Nelson and Peter Moore were almost fatherly when you would ring them up and visit their dressing rooms. So going back to Belmore in June was like stepping back into cadet lectures. It was a night of old faces – so many that when I ran into the owner of The Australian bar in New York, my head almost exploded in confusion. Interviewing Josh Reynolds with the crowd chanting his name and walking to the eastern side as the Dogs performed their team song in front of the hill – unforgettable stuff. Canterbury has been a conduit for many years through which people new to this country celebrated their Australian-ness.

June 17: NSW 26 QUEENSLAND 18 at Melbourne Cricket Ground

I’VE not chosen this because of the result. Although I was born – and live – south of the border, I’m not the world’s biggest Blues fan. I flew in from Europe the morning of this match and going back to the MCG, as part of a 91,513 crowd, was quite an experience. Highlights of the evening included running into Scotland coach Steve McCormack in the NSW sheds and the bizarre sight of NRL media strategist Peter Grimshaw competing in a Family Fued episode that was showing in the press box! Origin on the road is a winner.

August 2: ST GEORGE ILLAWARRA 46 NEWCASTLE 24 at Kogarah Oval

AS a sportswriter, there is a scary age you reach when you realise you covered the entire PLAYING careers of today’s COACHES. I was there when Dragons boss Paul McGregor played for City Seconds after just a handful of first grade games. And I’ve been on tours with Danny Buderus, I’ve even seen him play in Jacksonville for Leeds. On a sunny winter’s afternoon, this was a reminder of a life well spent as Buderus jpined the coaching ranks. “It’s lonely up there,” he said, when I eventually got hold of him after his animated catchi-up with is mate “Mary”.

August 29: LEEDS 50 HULL KR 0 at Wembley Stadium

RUGBY League turned 50 on an average day in London, and 80,000 of us got an average Challenge Cup final. Not only did Leeds set a new scoring record against poor Hull KR, but winger Tom Briscoe posted an historic five-try haul. But none of that mattered. What we will take away from the day was Lizzie Jones, widow of Wales halfback Danny who died playing the game he loved in May, performing the hymn abide with me. Thirty seconds into her performance, the whole stadium erupted in applause. It was the most spine-tingling moment I can remember at a rugby league match.

IN the middle of this interview, Jarryd Hayne’s answers get shorter. It seems like he’s had enough.

Your correspondent has to spell it out: ‘this story has to run to about 1500 words, that’s why I’m asking lots of questions’. There’s a brief nod, and the answers get longer again.

It’s a neat encapsulation of what some people say makes the 21-year-old Parramatta flier tick. There’s a story they tell around South Sydney, about how Hayne’s father Manoa Thompson was worried he would sleep through his alarm and miss a early training session at Redfern.

So he drove to the oval the night before, pulled up in the carpark – and went to sleep there, knowing someone would wake him up as they walked past his car. An apocryphal story, perhaps, but like father, like son. Jarryd Hayne marches to the beat of his own drum and the route he takes to success on the football field is rarely the conventional one.

But he doesn’t leave success waiting. The two of them, Hayne and success, almost always meet at the appointed place and time and get on famously. In fact, Hayne’s best friend in most teams is success.

A-List won’t bore you with stories of pet dogs, banter with team-mates, shopping malls and nearby AFL stars this week. We got Hayne at a NSW media opportunity – a bit before most of the fourth estate descended – and the details make for tedious reading.

The Fiji fullback is sat in one of those cubbyholes they have in the home dressingrooms at Sydney Football Stadium, wearing regulation NSW training gear, and talked into a digital voice recorder.

So after experimenting with Rolling Stone-style profiles and sub-headings, this week we’ll utilise another old journalistic favourite – the Q&A:

A-List: You’ve come into Origin camp on the back of Parramatta’s 23-6 loss to Wests Tigers. How do you reflect on that game?

Hayne: “We were a bit rusty, I was a bit rusty myself. It was probably our worst performance all year so I was a bit disappointed but I had a bit of a virus, a stomach bug at the end of the week and that didn’t help. I got it on Friday. We trained pretty late and then we had a sauna session after. We were out in the cold, when I was pretty sweaty. Then Saturday, Sunday I was a bit rusty and I wasn’t sure if I was going to play or not.’’

A-List: How would you sum up the year at Parra? And also your own year?

Hayne: “It’s been tough. It wouldn’t help any club to go through what we’ve been through. To not be coming last is a pretty good effort. To lose our halfback, to lose Feleti (Mateo). To lose one halfback, get a good combination going, and the lose another from the halves combination … it was very tough, it’s really taken it’s toll on the team. The state we’re in now, we’ve pretty much got to play our best every week to be competitive.’’

A-List: You’ve had a new coach coming in and changing things over the summer, there’s blokes off contract who do don’t know what they’re doing next year. Does that have an impact out on the field?

Hayne: “Yeah, it’s tough – especially when you’ve got guys who have been here for a while and they’re not sure if they’re going to be there next year or not. That’s what the coach is there to do. He wants players that he wants there. At the end of the day, it is what it is. There’s always fors and against. Obviously I’m going to lose some mates over the summer because they’re going to move on. I think he’s bought really well with (Shane) Shackleton and (Justin) Poore. I don’t know if he’s looking for anyone else….’’

A-List: You’re probably playing the best footy of your career right now. Is that how you thought 2009 would pan out? How would you describe the year for you personally and what’s changed?

Hayne: “I don’t know, just attitude. I’ve taken it upon myself to do a bit more and I’m a bit more confident in the team and I’m sort of take a bit more control of the team.’’

A-List: And being fullback must be a big boost to you as well…

Hayne: “Yeah, I’m rapt, I’m loving it. I hope to stay there, yeah.’’

A-List: For people why have never done it, tell us what it’s like to run out in an Origin game. What was it like running down that tunnel for the first time? Did anything surprise you?

Hayne: “Yeah, (it’s great) just being able to do it. You know it’s going to be fast, you know it’s going to be intense. Just being out there and in the moment, it’s good, it’s an awesome buzz. It’s one of the best feelings you can get, running out in the Blues jersey. You’re playing against the best players. The main thing is that everyone’s on the same level. From the intensity in training to just the little things, you don’t see the same things at club level you see at Origin level.’’

A-List: Are you more worried about making a mistake in Origin than you are in club football?

A-List: But you are a creative player, you take risks. Does that affect your mindset going into an Origin game, if you are more worried about making a mistake?

Hayne: “No, not really.”

A-List: But in your first year of Origin, you tapped the ball infield and Queensland scored. How hard is it not to dwell on things like that?

Hayne: “Not that pass. I thought I was doing good for the team. I thought it was a 40-20, they’d scored two tries, we were on the back foot and I knew when it went out it really would have rattled us. It wasn’t like I was trying to do a magic play or I was trying to do something arsey or silly. That’s not why I did it.‘’

A-List: Everyone else is talking about four series in a row for Queensland. Are you fellas thinking about it a lot?

Hayne: “Yeah, of course. We don’t want want to play in the team that has been beaten four series in a row so it’s a major factor. I think the team we have now should be up for the task.’’

A-List: Tell us about how the side lifted in Melbourne after a poor period in the first half?

Hayne: “I think we were playing like that the whole game but sort of just weren’t getting the lucky chances we were getting in the second half. ‘’

A-List: Have you watched your no-try back on many occasions since then?

Hayne: “Yes’’.

A-List: And what are your thoughts when you watch it back?

Hayne: “What everyone else says. It’s a try.’’

A-List: What can we do to prevent those sort of mistakes happening again.

Hayne: “If there’s a touch judge there, what’s the point of going to the video ref? He didn’t put his flag up. So if he doesn’t put his flag up, why are we going to the video ref, you know what I mean?’’

A-List: So they should show more faith in the officials on the field?

Hayne: “Yeah’’.

A-List: You’ve played just one Test for Australia. At the end of the year there’s a Four Nations and a Pacific Cup? Would you like to play for Fiji again?

Hayne: “No, I think I’ll just stay with Australia this year. The World Cup was something special but I think you can only change a certain number of times in a certain amount of years. I’ll probably stick with Australia and if I don’t get selected I’ll go on a bit of a holiday.’’

A-List: When you say your attitude is different this year, what do you mean?

Hayne: “Before, I used to eat rubbish the day before the game. Now I’m eating right seven days a week and looking after my body a bit more, not going out as much. Just a bit more focus on footy. When I first came into first grade I was a bit young and got a bit sidetracked with the partying.’’

A-List: Was there a single thing that changed your outlook?

Hayne: “Just the World Cup. I really appreciate what I have and how many people wish they were in my shoes so that’s something that really drove me. Seeing the Fijian boys, how proud they were just to play for Fiji. To see them, puting the effort in and the enthusiasm they had really made me feel I should be doing more for myself.’’

A-List: And I suppose you were thrust into a leadership role there whether you wanted one or not.

Hayne: “I think that really helped me because I brought it back to Parra. The thinks I was doing in the Fijian team I was puting it upon myself to do with Parra. It’s obviously affected me in Parra as well.’’

A-List: And before that, you just considered yourself another footy player?

Hayne: “Oh, being young you don’t really want to be really stepping up and taking charge of a team. You had a whole lot of people there who had been around for a while and you just sit back and let them do their thing and you just finish it off at the end of it – which in ’06 I did. We had good halves and a good centre in Luke o’Dwyer who just looked after me. They all sort of left so I had to step up.

A-List: You will forever be known as the man who was shot at in Kings Cross. Is it still fun being a footy player or has scrutiny made it just a business?

Hayne: “Of course. I wouldn’t swap it for the world. It’s just a bit different now compared with back in the day, what the older players used to get away with. It’s a bit hard when you hear all these stories about what they used to get up to. Now, it’s like if you do anything near that you pretty much wouldn’t have a contract. It’s tough. It’s a new generation, a time when things are changing. We’ve just got to get used to it.’’

By STEVE MASCORDTHE London Broncos will be competing in Super League next year after agreeing to a ground sharing arrangement at Barnett – but what sort of side will they field? And can the NRL’s reported Wembley ambitions finally breath life into rugby league in the capital after 30 years of hand-to-mouth toil?
Some Broncos sides over the years have grossly underachieved after shipping in big names from Australia and New Zealand so we can only hope the opposite is true and a team of young locals can outstrip everyone’s – admittedly very low – expectations in 2014.
Which brings us to colleague Brad Walter’s recent story about the NRL planning an Origin game at Wembley.
To suggest 74,000 people attended the World Cup final looking for “NRL-style rugby league” would be more than a little egotistical on the part of the commission. They went looking for … a World Cup final. And most of them bought their tickets when England was still a chance of being there.
The expression is “build it and they will come” not “throw it out there and they will come”.
Even the mighty NFL had to saturate television in the UK for years before moving games to Wembley. To think a sport that struggles to get 2000 people to The Stoop every second week can suddenly attract 92,000 for a game between two Australian states is nothing short of extreme Antipodean hubris.
That is not to say we should abandon the idea altogether.
The beauty of it, in fact, is that the NRL now has an incentive to help the British game, and London in particular. If it truly believes it can make money out of the biggest city in the world where our sport has a professional club, then it should get on board and help that club.
This could take the form of scholarship arrangements for young Australian players, an investment in the club, outright ownership coaching assistance and pre-season training camps in either hemisphere.
Certainly the NRL will find it hard to capture the imagination of rank-and-file Londoners as something more glamorous than the flat cap-and-whippets northern game they know rugby league to be as long as it remains on obscure Premier Sports.
But ee had the answer first: NRL helping London. With the prospect of making some money, we now have the question.

CHEERLEADERS seem to be going the way of differential penalties and five-minute sin bins, and I know many of my female colleagues won’t miss them.

FROM his tongue stud to his South Sydney playing number tattooed on his neck, Chris McQueen is the archetypal ‘Nu Skool’ rugby league player.

So when he talks about Facebook and ‘the biff’ in the same sentence, he bears listening to.

“I actually saw someone on Facebook last night say ‘bring back the biff’,” says McQueen, 26, perched the the Café On The Park in Redfern, “and I sort of thought to myself: ‘those days are gone’.

“We’re all professionals. No-one goes out on the field and says ‘I’m going to punch someone and hurt someone’. It’s not why we play the game.

“We play the game for success, we play the game for our brothers and for our mates. It’s not about fighting.

“I’m sorry, I know that might disappoint some of the old guys but that’s the way it is.”

For a man who eschews violence, loves Nu Metal and experiments with facial hair the way most of us change clothes, the South Sydney back rower’s football actually seems to have more in common with the past than the current age of hulking wrestlers.

South Sydney old timers see Ron Coote and Norm Proven in the uncompromising, upright running style and tough defence of this former winger.

Now a Queensland State of Originsback rower and set for a pay rise because of it, the Kingaroy product’s success has been a result of three transitions, two of them extremely difficult.

Here, for A-List, he outlines how each of the big moves transpired:

ONE: “The move to Brisbane, I found that pretty easy. My mum has been in Brisbane forever. Also, I did the move to Brisbane with my two best mates from school – Aaron and Ryan Brown, they’re twin brothers. They’re as close to me as my real brothers. I spent my whole life with them. I grew up with and worked with them. I played with them, got a job with them, we went to school together, we were in all the same classes.

“We all moved together to play with Wynumn Manly. I’ve got their names tattooed on my leg, that’s how close we all are.

“You go straight into the team environment and straight away you’re meeting guys, you’re making new friends. It’s not like just moving somewhere with no-one and not having the opportunity to meet people so I found that pretty easy.”

TWO: “When I moved to Sydney, that was a bit harder. Coming into a first grade squad, I didn’t know anyone. I was very shy around the boys. I’d never been to Sydney, just didn’t know my way around and I just felt lost. It took a while, it took a few months but once I got to know the boys and the season came around and we started playing and that sort of thing, it all just happened a lot easier.”

THREE: “Moving to being a winger and an outside back to back row … I played a bit of back row the year before last under (John Lang) but that was more just due to the fact we had so many injuries and a few suspensions throughout the year. That was never going to be a permanent move. When (Michael Maguire) gave me the tap on the shoulder and said ‘I want you to play back row’…. Yeah I was keen to give it ago but it wasn’t a smooth transition. It took a lot of hard work. I had to get my defence up to scratch, I wasn’t fit enough, I struggled with it. I got dropped for five weeks or so … going back to the Bears was a good opportunity to play long minutes and that helped.

“There was a game last year, it was the second time we played the Bulldogs … and I was 18th man and Eddy Pettybourne got hurt. He pulled out, I went into the team and I sat on the bench the whole game.

“Madge said … it was a tight game and he wasn’t sure if I’d have handled it out there. I sort of said ‘have you given any thought to putting me back on the wing? I think I could do a job on the wing for the team’. He dismissed it straight away, he wasn’t interested.

“If he had said (then) ‘yeah, I’ll give you a crack’, we wouldn’t have known what I could have done as a back rower. I guess none of this would have happened, I don’t know where I would have been as a winger.”

Sattler and Provan probably wouldn’t have talked about loneliness and their own failings as a footballer in an interview. But today’s kids have no such reticence.

Through it all, McQueen’s biggest supporter had been his father Kevin. Now a road worker in Cairns, Kevin was born in England – meaning his son is eligible for Steve McNamara’s men – and has 17 tattoos.

Kevin supports Manly, the only other NRL side to show interest in Chris and has already found space for a couple more tatts: one for a bunnies premiership, and one for his son’s (Australian!) World Cup selection.

“He was covered in tatts,” Chris jnr says of his dad, with visible fondness.

“I got my first one when I had just turned 17. The guy that’s done all my tattoos, I used to live with him. He used to live near my old man. He moved from Kingaroy to the Sunshine Coast so we spent a weekend down at his place and he gave me my first tattoo.

“Especially being from a country town, no-one really had tattoos. I was the first of my friends to get a tattoo. Now you look around, even look around our dressing room, more people have tattoos than don’t.

“The tattoos reflect your personality. You can sort of make that link: ‘oh, he’s a bit of a rocker and he has tatts’. But they’re completely separate. You see people from all walks of life with tattoos.

“I’ve seen my old man covered in tattoos. As long as I can remember in my life, he’s been covered so I never gave it a second thought. People might judge but as I say, nowdays everyone’s got tattoos.

“I think a bit of the stigma and the bad reputation has gone from people with tattoos. I wasn’t too worried about it.”

Nevertheless, one of the first pieces of ink Chris got in Sydney was something of a gamble. He smiles at the memory.

“I played four first grade games and got the (‘1070’) tattoo on my neck, which is something I’d never regret, no matter if I left the club or whatever had have happened,” he explains.

“It was always going to be my first club and it was always going to be my first NRL number so it’s always going to be special for me. A couple of weeks after I got the tattoo, I did my knee again – did my ACL – and that was the start of the 2010 season and I was off contract at the end of that year so I was a bit worried, only having four first grade games under my belt and missing the whole second season of that contract, that I was just going to be let go.

“But they came to me pretty quick, the club. Russell (Crowe) actually spoke to me and said they were going to give me another shot, give me another one-year contract which is what happened.

“I feel like I’m a part of the club now.”

Aside from decrying the biff, McQueen is careful what he says on social media and has so far managed to stay away from the front of the paper. But after his debut Origin season this year, there were reports he – to put it bluntly – wanted more money.

“Madge actually came to me after that Origin period and he’s big on player welfare and that sort of thing,” McQueen recounts.

“… and (he) said he would have a look at that. He’s big on paying players what they’re worth. For an Origin starting back rower, Madge – I guess – has an idea in his head about how much he should be paid. We’re going to look at it during the off-season. I know that Madge and the club will do the right thing by me so I’m not pressing the issue. I know we’ll get it sorted out.

“We’re all working really hard. We all love it bit it is really tough so for a club to look after the player and approach them before the player has to approach the club, I think that’s a really good sign.”

There are good signs everywhere for Chris McQueen. Just ask him to show you.